November 12, 2025

The majority of Americans believe recycling makes a difference, but limited info on what can be recycled, plus a hodgepodge of state and local recycling systems, means many of us don’t bother — especially for hard-to-recycle things like that box of random cables we all have.

From a brand perspective, though, we know circularity strategies can help companies gain customers and boost loyalty. That got us thinking: How can brands rebuild trust in recycling to increase profits?

So we tapped into our proprietary audience data to figure out the best ways to engage consumers about recycling programs. Plus, an exclusive conversation with Staples about its plan to become the recycling destination — and pay customers in the process.

MARKET PULSE

The big picture: Can brands capitalize on recycling?

“Wishcycling” is putting an empty takeout container in the recycling bin with a hope and a prayer that it actually gets recycled. Deep down, we know it probably won’t happen:

According to a recent report by the Recycling Partnership, only 17% of respondents feel well-informed about what happens to their recycling.
And just 43% of U.S. households even participate in recycling.

Consumer confidence is low, and confusion is high. And right now, many businesses see recycling as added friction. But with only 21% of recyclable material being recycled, that leaves a lot of room for businesses to find an edge.

For example, Staples has seen a strong correlation between its recycling initiatives and increasing sales. Solving a pain point like how to safely get rid of dead batteries increases brand loyalty, and in-store recycling can bring shoppers back into brick-and-mortar stores that have been hard-pressed for foot traffic.

Bottom line: There’s plenty of white space for brands to move into when it comes to recycling.

This strategy can work beyond tech and office supplies — think clothing retailers like REI and Madewell or beauty brands like Sephora. Having a circularity strategy can be a competitive edge because, in addition to possible resale benefits, brands can gain more touch points with new and existing customers.

The key is making recycling as frictionless as possible for the consumer, which often means adding incentives and increasing awareness (and trust) about what happens to recycled products next. What’s more, our data reiterates that motivation like store credit boosts recycling engagement.

📣 One more thing: Next week, TCD co-founder Anna Robertson will be speaking about the best combo since PB&J — employee engagement and sustainability — in a free webinar hosted by RecruitmentMarketing.com. Sign up here.

FROM FREYA

There’s so much shame and guilt around sustainability that being rewarded for doing the right thing comes as a welcome surprise.

FREYA WILLIAMS is the author of Green Giants: How Smart Companies Turn Sustainability into Billion-Dollar Businesses and the host of TCD's green business webinars. Check out the book here.

TCD LABS

Our data: How can brands engage consumers around recycling programs?

To test how brands can engage consumers around recycling programs, we ran an A/B test highlighting Staples’ ink-recycling initiative. One ad focused on financial compensation for turning in old ink cartridges, while the other strategy focused on repurposing them as road material.

Messaging around store credit produced a moderately higher attention score and a much higher engagement score than the road material messaging.

The overperformance of store credit suggests that consumer interest in financial incentives is matched by genuine consumer enthusiasm — meaning store credit wins hearts as well as eyeballs.

🔎 A quick look at age insights:

The store credit messaging was favored above and beyond by participants aged 25-34 and was engaged with more readily by five of the six age brackets.
Meanwhile, the 18-24 audience (albeit a smaller sample size) was unique in preferring the new-roads messaging across both attention and engagement metrics.

Our weekly poll helps round out the picture. When asked which factor would motivate them to recycle old batteries, our readers overwhelmingly voted for either “getting money back” or “helping the planet.”

The response of “I don’t recycle old batteries” from a fifth of the audience suggests a meaningful opportunity to educate mainstream consumers about the importance of — and opportunities for — battery recycling.

That’s certainly on Staples’ to-do list, as the company and its partners can recycle 98% of each battery — more on that next.

See full results →

TCD LABS research is powered by our proprietary GreenScreen data stack. You can access historical GreenScreen tests and polls — and commission your own bespoke experiments — here and here.

DOING IT RIGHT

Why Staples is paying customers to recycle their old tech

Raise your hand if you have a junk drawer full of old batteries and empty printer cartridges ✋

Well, we’ve got good news: Staples will take it off your hands — and pay you for it. In the past three years alone, the company and its partners have recycled 7,000 tons of e-waste.

In an exclusive conversation with The Cool Down, Brian Coupland, the company’s senior vice president of merchandising, talked about Staples’ strategy to offer a solution to a key part of the fragmented, often frustrating recycling experience in the U.S. — while bringing more customers into its stores.

Here are the big takeaways:

Go for the tough stuff: Staples differentiates itself by focusing on hard-to-recycle items. “If you start to poke around … your house,” Coupland said, “it’s pretty interesting how many rooms and how many things that we could provide a recycling activity for.”
Unique partnerships lead to unique solutions: Staples just celebrated a major milestone that it helped HP achieve: 1 billion ink and toner cartridges recycled. And some of that is used to build new roads.
Sustainability is good business: Offering recycling services gets customers in the door. “We find when customers start recycling,” Coupland said. “Their shopping behavior changes.”

“We can pinpoint when they start recycling and frankly become more loyal to the brand,” Coupland told us. “It is very fulfilling for what we’re trying to accomplish for the environment and … the health of the business.”

⏭️ Next week: We’ll be talking with Allbirds about the efficacy of carbon-footprint labels on products.

Learn more →

WORK WITH TCD

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